Poems & Essays

Listening to My Child Singly

It was a late Thursday evening and I was hitting away at the keyboard furiously, trying to complete an assignment as the curry simmered on the stove. At the back of my mind were several pending bills and my appointment with the eye doctor the next day. A slow migraine was creeping into my head, and I was torn— between shutting down the PC to stand under a warm shower and completing everything before going to bed. Just then, my teen entered and started gushing about something new he had learned in school. I nodded and smiled even as I continued to type in a frenzied whirl. As though to compete with my flying fingers, his words also gathered speed and tumbled out of his mouth—eager, excited and young.I typed, he talked. About physics and his‘awesome’ new physics teacher. I nodded, he talked. Until five minutes later, he burst out, “Amma. You no longer listen to me.” Disillusion was writ large on his face. There was hurt in his voice. I sighed and looked up from the PC. Finally.

“Dude, my wrist is all sore,” I said, as though all I needed to listen to him were painless, strong wrists. The teen stormed out of the room, not wanting to waste his logic on me. By then, the project I was working on made little sense to me, and the migraine descended with a full blown intensity.

I went to the balcony to find the teen still sulking. In the soft light of the night, his face looked more vulnerable than ever. More lonely. His little moment of joy had been clipped short by a preoccupied mother. I felt weak with guilt. A few days ago, I had completed seven long years of being a single parent. I introspected how the boys and I found it easier to laugh now. We bonded over jokes and silly and meaningless rhymes. And yet my complacence seemed to be crashing. Perhaps I was standing at the same place where I stood a few years back. The movement I felt was perhaps my imagination.

“Hey P, I do listen to you,” I said finally, when I couldn’t take the silence any longer.

“I know Amma,” he said, “But you don’t listen to the things I want to tell you.”

There was finality in the way he said it. And, all at once, the demons of the last seven years began to hover over my head. Had I not been single, perhaps I would have switched off the PC and given him my full attention. Perhaps we would have chatted over steaming cups of chocolate and cookies. Perhaps I would have abandoned the senseless project mid way.

Too many possibilities.

Too many hypotheses.

And yet, even as I thought about it, it sounded too fantastical. I knew I was building a big, fat teardrop out of scattered self-pity bubbles. For P resembled my late husband in many ways. Both of them loved connecting the dots; puzzles, math and Mensa, excited them no end.

“Go on try…this time I might really listen to you,” I said, my voice thin and watery.

P nodded and began to talk. He talked about math and physics. About concepts that confounded him. That made him feel lost. About simple harmonic motion and how it excited him. About speed and velocity. About the parabolic paths that bullets make sometimes. About vectors and calculus.

And I listened— to the sentences that poured forth, to the slight tremble in his voice. To the exclamation marks that followed. The sudden lull in his voice as perhaps his eyes were getting heavy with sleep. And the rise again. Like water gushing from a tap. The concepts were beginning to shed a little bit of their alien-ness. P questioned me. He patiently explained to me why my answers were incorrect. We discussed premises and limits. P asked more questions and I tried to answer with as much logic as my poetry-loving brain could muster at that late night hour.

A couple of hours later, P went to sleep.

I sat in the balcony, still holding my mug and was reminded of an outing a couple of years ago. Both the boys were still small and I had taken them to the beach. J wanted to play with the waves and P wanted to remain in the sand. As I took J into the water, P scrunched up on his fours and started digging furiously. Minutes later, when J and I returned, P excitedly showed us the little ‘sea’ in his pit—garrulous, frothy, and brown, it almost resembled the Bay of Bengal at a distance. J clapped his hands with joy.

It was almost dawn now. I had sat for the whole night in the balcony. The guilt of the previous night left me. A few choices were taking shape in my head. And in my heart. In a couple of hours, the Eastern sky would fill with light. My head still ached. Yet in a strange way, the pain no longer possessed me. It sat there at the back of my head in companionable silence, like a best friend, a soul sister.

And, as I made myself a cup of coffee, I pondered upon the role of listening and its intrinsic role in parenting—the absent-minded listening and the I-am-there-for-you listening, the excited listening and the drooping-of spirits listening, the you-can’t argue-with-me listening and the curious listening, the indulgent listening and I-am-not going to pamper-you-this time listening.

Whatever it was, I realized listening made me feel less vulnerable and more secure over the years. So I listened to the boys. To the games they played just outside my study door. To the ridiculous jokes they made up. The way they doubled up with laughter every moment. To the tales they carried from playground and school. To their fleeting sense of injustice they sometimes brought from these spaces. To their report card tales. To the names they called each other. To the secrets they hid from me.

And, as the thoughts grew more blurred, I fell asleep, knowing that the boys were fast asleep, stirring in their own world of dreams and make believe. In a few hours, I would wake up and email the freelancing client and ask him for an extension for the project. In the evening, I would once again listen to the boys recount their tales. In their young voices, I would begin to sprout wings and once again inhale the delicious whiff of freedom—a freedom that belongs to the earth as it as much as it belongs to the skies—poignant, poetic and firmly grounded.

Sridevi Datta was an accounting SME in her previous birth. This life, she is a full time content writer and editor. She has written for Huff Post, Women’s Web and Ezinearticles in addition to blogging at The Write Journey. An ardent lover of poetry, she loves reading books which have a strong cultural backbone and which reflect local thinking of the place and people. She is also a proud mother to two brats, who are solely responsible for her insanity and laughter.

Dear Sri,
Your writing always resonates with the mother in me. Every year of parenting teaches me something – this year I too have taken up the art of listening. As i was going through this chapter in my life, I saw this post. As usual, I love sailing in the same boat as you.

Your writing touched my heart again! same happened with me but i took it so lightly n left it for my daughter to turn up after her anger settles down. ur blog made me ponder over it. Devi u r a marvellous writer. i will compile n publish all ur write up’s n gift it to my, your n rinku’s children in their marriage!

Sridevi, I think I listened to them better when they were with me…
Now, over the phone, I am absent minded…or engrossed with things happening with me in person, that I miss out on few things…then later, I sulk…call them again and talk to them !!
Its so very important for our own life and survival !!